Accumulation

Grad students in general complain a lot about grad school (see: PhD comics), but I think one undeniable fact about it is the accumulation of knowledge. I worked for a prof during one of my co-op terms, and he's now applying for a Canadian Research Chair, which is pretty cool. One of the requirements for the CRC is that he had to give a seminar on his target application, so I decided to drop in on the seminar.

Not that much of the seminar was that new to me. I've seen them either in his course that I took, or when I was co-op'ing. Certainly, having a stronger algorithms, machine learning and robotics background, I can appreciate the ideas and models more, and ended up talking to him at the end, pointing out different algorithms that is probably worth trying. Felt super weird, telling a prof that I've got some ideas for him to try.

I think a big part of growing up is that we don't see that we're growing up. I still refer to my parents as the "adults" and us as the "kids". PhD has been tough because really, my prof is training us to be her peer (never going to happen), and the responsibilities and expectations are gradually shifting to me. But that's what real life is like as well. A reminder to raise to the responsibilities and expectations set before us.

As a side note, sometimes I get asked what PhD is like. I've come to describe it as this:

• Undergrad - Your prof asks you a question...then he answers it
• Masters - Your prof asks you a question...then you answer it
• PhD - You prof looks at you. You ask yourself a question. Then you answer it

That, and I point them to PhD comics. 

Start of an amazing race

Joanna is a fan of the show Amazing Race, and has on occasion noted that it’d be fun to be part of something like that. Though, the chances of that is pretty low, given that neither of us are fans of the camera. As such, I thought it would be nice if I set up something similar for her to go through. Nothing big, maybe a few things to find, some tasks to complete, some places to go to.

I decided to separate the Race into three components: Joanna's Toronto house, Toronto people, and Waterloo people. 

Toronto House Scavenger Hunt (Sat)
This was fairly easy to set up. I hid several items in her house, and had her search for it. Some of the more interesting items included:

• A can of Campbell soup under her computer desk - For some random minor anniversary (like 2 years and 5 months or something like that), we bought some food at the local grocery store and went over to her place, intending to cook. However, this is during that crazy November 2012 storm and power went out at her place. Luckily, we bought emergency food: a can of soup. Unluckily, the microwave and the oven didn't work because the power was out. Thus, the dinner was unmicrowaved canned soup. The only reason why I knew that wouldn't give us food poisoning is because the UWO guys did it all the time. If any of those guys happen to be reading this, I formally apologize for that one time where I renounced your practice of not using the microwave when it was just around the corner at Taylor.
• A University of Waterloo teddy bear with a shirt that says "Someone at Waterloo loves me" - A while ago, she got me a similar bear from McMaster. It seemed almost like regifting if I just got her the same thing back, so I hid it behind some other stuff animals that she has. Except for she found it randomly, way ahead of schedule. That took some quick improvising on my part.
• Fundamental Nursing - I hid a note in one of her nursing textbooks. The clue pointing to it was encoded by a shifted alphabet cypher that she figured out...of course, I proceeded to misspell the name of the textbook in the cypher. Good thing it was close enough. 

Now that I've made her run around a bit, I had planted the last clue so that she ends up calling one of her friends...

Toronto People Meeting ups (Sun to Fri)
 I met up with several of her friends, of either people she grew up with, or people she's became close with over the span of university. I was only able to include a handful (I did want to propose relatively soon, ya know) of people, but it largely involved me letting them know that Joanna will call them in some general time period, and that they should arrange to meet up in another time period, and when they do, she is to be handed some clues that leads to yet another people. 

A fair bit of running around for her. But it sounded like it was relatively interesting. This lasted two weeks, where she met up with 4 groups of people.

Waterloo Events (Sat)
I scheduled her events around two weekends that she would be back at town. She worked at Mikey's when she was younger, so we got her to clean, so that was kind of amusing. The big event here though, is a photo scavenger hunt, where she had to sift through Facebook photos. That took quite a while. 

Her family is also big into dumpling folding and board games, so I asked her sister to host such an event...then crashed it. It was her sister's birthday earlier in the week, so we thought it would be funny to show up with a cake in the middle of their party. Our insiders worked out well. 

Proposal (Sun)
After church and lunch, we started the last segment. For her to get her next clue, I told her that she had to beat me at a video game. She chose Puzzle Fighter, and proceeded to wipe the floor with me. And here I thought we'd be playing it for a while...

Her clues led her to E5, where a bottle of Green Tea Frappuccino (melted and shoved into a bottle) was waiting in a fridge in the student lounge. I had bought this on Sat, and got it into an old Sprite glass bottle I had. Unfortunately, I used her Starbucks card so she gets points, and I didn't realize that she gets alerted when she earned a new drink on my purchase. Another moment of quick thinking was needed when she asked me the next day (I rarely get Starbucks). 

While in Japan, we had joked that the Arashiyama bamboo forests would've been a perfect place to propose. If I had done it with a green tea latte (it was pretty good) in one hand and the ring in the other, and had Kobe steak afterwards, it would've been amazing engagement. 

Waterloo Park, unfortunately, was the closest forest I had available to me. Before we started dating, we had chatted at length about the idea. These chatting happened 1) in a house I no longer lived in, 2) in a parking lot, and 3) in a playground at Waterloo Park. Obviously, the most romantic location out of these is the parking lot the playground, so the clues let her to the playground. It was pretty busy there, so we eventually moved on to a soccer field. 

We chatted for a bit, and I felt that it was appropriate to remind ourselves Eph 5, so we did a bit of reading. And talked about tangential things. And tangented. It was rather nerve-wracking. When it really came down to it, I was on my knee for a good 5-10 minutes, asking her if she was ready for it. Inside the ring box was actually my Iron Ring (which we also joked about), which we laughed at for a bit before I pulled out the actual ring from my wallet. 

We went to dinner afterwards, with some of the Waterloo people that helped me pull this off, at Golf's. Not quite Kobe, but steak nevertheless. 

Oh, right. She said yes.

Road to higher education

The decision to continue onto PhD has not been a trivial nor straightforward one. Nor should it be. I didn't see myself facing this decision, but I suppose most people don't know where they'll end up when they first stepped onto their university campus.

There are many reasons on why I should do it. Wanting to stay in biomedical R&D. I'm actually starting to get the topics I'm involved in now. The research topic is good and worthwhile and applicable. It'll be needed to climb the corporate ladder. Continue my current research and not assume that the grass is greener on the other side. A opened door that really isn't that common. It'll likely be difficult to come back to school once I start working, due to financial and social obligations. Poor job market. But there also many reasons why I shouldn't do it. It feels like I'm copping out of job applications. One shouldn't default into a PhD. Higher education can limit certain career options. Most people can find a job with 4 years of university, so the benefit of the extra 6 years is questionable. I wouldn't want to be typecasted into a "head in the cloud" academic, who can't do anything practical because all I know is research and theory. Rather not become prideful and egotistical in the letters behind my name. I've been in Waterloo (and of school in general, for that matter) for a rather long time already, and it'd likely be good to make a full break with the place. Most of my friends have graduated and moved on.

And the argument continues. Consulting n number of people results in n number of different opinions. Thinking about the future leads to dozens more what-if situations. The more one tries to grasp onto the future, the more the uncertainty of the future grasps you.

At the end of the day, the tipping factor was an unexpected one: my faith. In the midst of all the career calculations and thinking about future plans, I reflected on how stepping into biomedical engineering, to begin with, was a faith-driven decision. That my Masters degree was a faith-driven decision. And so the next step should also be a faith-driven decision. Beyond my original decisions that brought me into biomedical, and a desire to innovate and advance our medical field, I have realized that perhaps this is another calling as well.

We often talk about how our faith should spill over into other aspects of our lives. As the fundamentalists retreated from the "toxic effect" of modern society, a key few chose to become high profile apologists in order to maintain the Christian voice, but the retreat led to further animosity between the camps. Today, everything is politicized. One can hardly even eat fried chicken without facing some accusations. Christians and non-Christian argue about everything. It is fashionable to take potshots at the Christian mentality and belief, as it is easy to point at Christians and accuse them of bigotry, which itself is an intolerant thought. There will always be a camp within all fraction that take the headlines. Extremest Christians. Radical Muslim. Antagonistic Atheists. And so forth. The Internet has done much to add to the fire. Hardly any group can claim perfection, and the Christians ought to be the first to stand down. But this is another discussion for another time.

Christians have somehow garnered a reputation for being anti-science, a reputation that people like Francis Collins [1] and Tim Keller [2] are pushing back against in matters such as evolution. Although some articles (citation needed - can't remember where I read that from anymore) report that the number of scientist subscribing to the Christian faith are indeed rising, the number of Christians in higher educations still continue to be lacking. I feel that it is important that Christianity remains a viable option for "intellectuals", whatever that may entail in the eyes of detractors, and not for the "backward". That this action in itself is an act of apologetics. That added a good weight to the should pile, and so here I go.

Interesting readings (hardly the only point of views, but articles for more science-y people):
[1] Collins, F. S. The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief. 2006. Free Press
[2] Keller, T. Creation, Evolution and Christan Laypeople. 2012. The BioLogos Foundation. Link.

So what - Resurrection

For if the dead are not raised, then Christ has not been raised either. And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile; you are still in your sins. Then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ are lost. If only for this life we have hope in Christ, we are to be pitied more than all men.

- 1 Corinthians 15.16-19 (NIV)

With the passing of Easter, we celebrated the death and resurrection of Christ. An odd celebration, to be sure, I don't know of any other religion that holds up the death of their head leadership figure like Christians do. I was at the Lincoln Road's Easter Friday service, and they did a good job drawing parallels between OT occurrences and NT ones. Such as Eden vs Gethsemane. And talked about a story that made the sacrifice of Christ a bit more "modern" and easier to understand. I wasn't at Lincoln's Easter Sunday service, since Simply had their first baptismal, so I didn't see how the finishing of the story went, but I've noticed that we often skip over the "so what" factor.

Why do we celebrate the death of this man? Why don't we look more carefully at Christ's compassion or teachings? People generally agree that Jesus is a good teacher. Why not talk about that? Paul talks about this in 1 Cor 15. He states that our faith is futile, and that we are to be pitied more then all men. What is he talking about?

For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.

- Romans 6.23 (NIV) 

So sin and death goes hand in hand. In Genesis 3, God blocks the way to the Tree of Life because Adam sinned, and to prevent the sinning from staying with them forever, He prevented them from living forever. We sin (break the law), therefore the punishment (application of justice) is death. Death is the final word. Nothing came after that. In the OT, substitution with animals are allowed, but that required the continual sacrifice of animals, because we will always continue to fall short of God's standards.

In NT, Christ stepped forward as the sacrifice. So His death is important because we paid our punishment. His resurrection is important then, because sin and death are linked, and by surpassing death, Jesus surpassed sin. So if He didn't resurrect, then the system really hasn't changed, we still fall short of God with no way of making up for it. Our faith would be futile, and we would still be working our salvation.

Paul goes one step further. He says that if we don't have Christ, we are to be pitied more than all men. There is no purpose in in prayer (without Christ, the connection between humans and God would be limited to a select few), or living a self-controlled, self-less life. Without Christ, we should be going for money and comfort because there is nothing after our time on earth, so might as well eat, drink and be merry, while we still can. Why be disciplined if we're all going to die anyway?

But there is more then this life. Christ has ensured it.

Application of justice

A while ago, a news story came out on CBC, of a lady that handled OHIP cheques for doctors. Instead of depositing them in the doctors' accounts, she channeled it into her own account, stealing over $400k, and had a lavish lifestyle. In the article, she was quoted crying, terrified that she would go to jail. Curious to see what people would think about someone stealing from the 'rich doctors', I scrolled down and read the comments...

...and perhaps unsurprisingly, people were not sympathetic, and the general consensus is that she should pay it back (which, of course, she can't) and that she should go to jail, for stealing from the public. No pity at all (and perhaps she doesn't deserve any, given that she spent the money on herself), and in many cases, stated that the 9 month jail sentence she was handed to be too lenient. 10 years, they cried. Justice must be served, says them.

Justice and grace
Once in a while, I would think about the principle of grace. Even though this is a while collar crime, and evidently, didn't hurt the doctors enough that they didn't even notice this until after 4 years, people were outraged that someone could've done something like this, and that "The bottom line was ... some things you just can’t do. No matter how sorry we feel for people personally, we have to uphold the law as it exists." The public agrees that the law must be upheld, regardless of how much the perpetrator insists that the crime wasn't that bad.

I think that's the point that people miss when they ask why a loving God punishes the unrighteous. It isn't that God enjoys dishing out punishment. What parent enjoys punishing their children? But a God that judges to perfectly uphold the Law to ensure perfect justice must punish the perpetrators (else justice is not served). So how can one shout "justice must be served", and still stand against punishment from the Judge?

Perhaps they feel that the laws outlined by God is false and invalid. But even if we don't look at the greatest commandments of the Christian (Love your God, love your neighbour), people agree that there are a common moral standard that people uphold. For example, tenets that's common between Christianity and other faiths, such as Buddhism. But we can never do enough.

But what if someone paid back the $400k and took the jail time on her behalf? But it is precisely that no one is righteous that we need to be bailed out.